The Oracle logo is displayed in front of the Oracle headquarters on June 19, 2014 in Redwood City. On Thursday, Oracle reported better-than-expected fiscal second-quarter earnings and sales, but the company’s gains in cloud-based revenue fell shy of Wall Street analysts’ forecasts.

REDWOOD CITY — The jury is still out on Oracle’s big push into cloud-based software and services. But Oracle allayed some fears about the state of its cloud software efforts on Thursday when it reported cloud-based revenue of $1.5 billion during its fiscal second quarter, which ended November.

That figure was 44 percent higher than the $1.05 billion in cloud sales that Oracle reported in the same period a year ago, and topped the company’s own forecast for cloud sales to rise between 39 percent and 43 percent.

However, Oracle’s shares fell as much as 4.5 percent to $47.93 in after-hours trading because its cloud sales missed the $1.56 billion forecast by Wall Street analysts.

That reception took some of the shine off of the rest of Oracle’s quarterly report. The company earned 70 cents a share, excluding one-time items, on revenue of $9.62 billion. During last year’s second quarter, Oracle earned 61 cents a share, on $9.04 billion in sales. Wall Street analysts had forecast Oracle to earn 68 cents a share on revenue of $9.57 billion.

Oracle Chairman and Chief Technology Officer Larry Ellison used the company’s results to take a dig at rival Amazon, and its popular Amazon Web Services.

In a statement, Ellison reiterated that Oracle will soon deliver what he said will be the world’s first “self-driving,” fully autonomous database that will require no human effort for upgrades and product administration. Ellison said the Oracle Autonomous Database would cost “less than half the cost of running a database in the Amazon Cloud.”

Oracle’s results came as the company continues to shift its business more toward cloud-based subscriptions and away from its long-time reliance on software sales and revenue from product support and licenses.

Speaking on a conference call to discuss Oracle’s results, Co-Chief Executive Safra Catz said that for Oracle’s third quarter, it expects cloud revenue to rise 21 percent to 25 percent from the $1.2 billion it reported a year ago, and total revenue to climb 2 percent to 4 percent over last-year’s sales of $9.2 billion. Catz also said Oracle estimates its earnings, excluding one-time items, will be between 68 cents and 70 cents a share, compared to the 69 cents a share the company reported in the same period a year ago.

Rex Crum is the senior web editor for the business section for The Mercury News and Bay Area News Group. He also writes about business and technology for the publications' print and web editions, and has covered business and technology for nearly two decades. A native of Seattle, he remains a diehard Seahawks and Mariners fan and is imparting his fandom to his Oakland-native wife and two young daughters.

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